Google fires 28 employees for protesting $1.2B contract with Israel's military, lays off others, prioritizes AI

[RUFF BEEST]

First, let's cover their firing of employees who staged a sit-in protesting Google's contract with Israel's military (the IDF):

Google fires 28 workers for protesting $1.2 billion Israel contract

Google has fired more than two dozen employees for protesting the company's $1.2 billion contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud and

ground.news

(Choose your own media source)

• Google fired 28 employees who protested the company's cloud deal with Israel, citing disruptive behavior and threats.
• Google emphasized that impeding work and facility access is against policy, leading to the terminations.
• Employees involved in protests faced termination, even those not directly participating, sparking claims of retaliation.

Next, their layoffs:

Google cuts jobs in AI push | LinkedIn

Google is restructuring its finance team in a move that involves layoffs and relocations, according to an internal memo seen by CNBC.

www.linkedin.com

Google is restructuring its finance team in a move that involves layoffs and relocations, CNBC reports, citing an internal memo. The undisclosed number of job cuts will affect some employees in the U.S. and overseas. Google will also create "hubs" for more centralized operations in India, Mexico, Ireland, Atlanta and Chicago. This is the latest in a string of layoffs at Google amid a slowdown in advertising growth and a prioritization of investments in artificial intelligence. A spokesperson for Google confirmed the news but declined to share more details.

• Employees in the company's real estate department were also affected, according to Business Insider, which also reported on the layoffs.

Click to shrink...

Kiiiinda thinking it's time I reevaluated my relationship with this company...

 

[SmackDaddy]

Oof. Its so hard to invest in companies that arent assholes.

Theyre all assholes

 

[Ashes of Dreams]

Abhorrent company whose base products have only gotten worse and worse on top of all this shit. Too much of the internet is in their hands though, I'm not sure there's a solution there.

 

[Sr Kitsune]

"Don't be evil" motto very dead, for a good while now.

 

[scottbeowulf]

While I don't agree with this, I doubt there's another company in the same field, that wouldn't do exactly the same.

 

[Divvy]

Garbage trash company. They haven't a good product in a decade either

 

[jotun?]

Don't be evil

 

[Vicman]

Thank you for sharing and for using ground.news as source. Frustrating situation.

 

[Trick_GSF]

Google have been a terrible, terrible company for many, many reasons for many, many years now.

Disgusting.

 

[Mesoian]

Unsurprising, and unfortunately as others have said, I can't think of a company in the world that would alter course on this.

Everything I've heard about working at google seems like it's miserable.

 

[RUFF BEEST]

Thank you for sharing and for using ground.news as source. Frustrating situation.

Click to shrink...

Of course; I'll try to get a ground.news link going once they have more sources on the layoffs, as well

 

[Mesoian]

Thank you for sharing and for using ground.news as source. Frustrating situation.

Click to shrink...

Unrelated: Are people down on ground.news? Seems people were calling it centrist trash and, given the nature of the site, I don't know what's up with that.

 

[Sei]

Profits over people.

 

[Tsuyu]

I wish Microsoft hasn't scare them off from console space by buying Activision and Google somehow doubled down on Stadia after its failure.

It would be nice to see them lose money by funding games at least.

 

[Vicman]

Unrelated: Are people down on ground.news? Seems people were calling it centrist trash and, given the nature of the site, I don't know what's up with that.

Click to shrink...

What people? It just collects news from various source outlets and generates aggregated bullet points for us to read. I'm happy to be challenged if I'm mistaken mind you

 

[RastaMentality]

I know someone who knows one of the people who got arrested and fired. The statement Google gave about the firings was super hard-line. There's definitely been a shift since the 2020 days.

Their statement:

Following investigation, today we terminated the employment of twenty-eight employees found to be involved. We will continue to investigate and take action as needed.

Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to - including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment,_ Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and.

Workplace Concerns.

We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you're one of the few who are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior - up to and including termination.

Click to shrink...

 

[Mesoian]

What people? It just collects news from various source outlets and generates aggregated bullet points for us to read. I'm happy to be challenged if I'm mistaken mind you

Click to shrink...

Yeah that's why I was confused, it didn't make sense to me.

 

[effingvic]

Fuck Google for this. The comms sent out to their employees had a really threatening tone. What a bunch of shit heads.

Proud of the employees for taking a brave stand against this evil shit.

 

[dannymate]

A collection of alternatives to google services from the Ethical Software OT:

Spoiler: Email

Email Providers - Gmail, Hotmail etc.
POSTEO 🌲💰 - I've seen them recommended a few times. Super environmentally conscious.
Proton Mail 🔐✅ - Security focused email with a free option for those who just need the one account.
Mailbox 🔐💰🌲 - Uses 100% green energy and is recommended in privacy circles.
Stalwart 🧑‍💻️📝🔮 - Self hosted software with the goal of making it viable to run your own mail server.

Email Clients - Gmail App, Outlook
These clients can be used with any email provider. Your email provider may have their own bespoke apps you can use.
Desktop - Linux, Windows, MacOS
Thunderbird 📝✅- Thunderbird is THE open source email client. Made by Mozilla, the makers of Firefox.
Mailspring 📝- Pretty looking email client. It does have a paid tier for more commercial features.
Vivaldi - This browser comes with an email client built-in.

Desktop - Linux Only
Geary 📝- Email client with a Gnome style interface.
Kmail 📝- Email client with a KDE style interface.

Mobile - Android, iOS
I couldn't find any for iOS so either use Apple Mail or if you're lucky your email provider, such as Proton Mail, may have one.
Thunderbird (Currently "K-9 Mail") 📝▶️ - Thunderbird recently took ownership of an open source app and are developing it under their umbrella.
Fairmail 📝🔐▶️ - Fully featured email client. Neat, intuitive user interface.

Spoiler: Browsers

Browser - Google Chrome, Safari
The goal here is to move away from Chromium based browsers entirely but barring that just getting away from Google will suffice.
Desktop - Linux, Windows, MacOS
Firefox 📝 - I don't really like vanilla Firefox honestly. It's aight.
LibreWolf 🔐📝 - Privacy Focused Firefox
Waterfox 🔐📝 - Over the last year regained it's independence from an Ad company. Though not as privacy focused as LibreWolf, it provides lots of customisation options and is working on implementing new features.
Vivaldi ✅ - In the meantime if none of the Firefox-based alternatives do it for you I highly recommend Vivaldi. The company are solid and have their own Mastodon instance.

Mobile - Android, iOS
I relied on external recommendations for this set of browsers.
Firefox 📝▶️🍎 - I don't really like vanilla Firefox honestly. It's aight.
Mull 📝▶️ - This is a privacy oriented and deblobbed web browser based on Firefox.
Cromite 📝▶️- Privacy focused Chromium browser with ad-blocking built in. It's technically a fork of Chromium rather than being based on it.
Vivaldi ▶️🍎 - A more mainstream cross-platform option. Blocks ads and syncs between devices.
DuckDuckGo Browser 📝▶️🍎 - I actually only recommend this for iOS as it loses out to the other privacy centric options on Android.

Spoiler: Search Engines

Search Engine - Google Search
Ultimately Google Search is bad now anyway for the most part. You're just adding on "reddit" to everything anyway.
If you're interested in where each search engine pulls it's results you can look at this map.
DuckDuckGo 🔐 - Search with a Privacy Focus
Startpage 🔐 - It piggy backs off of Google but keeps you private
Ecosia 🌲 - All profits go towards climate action!
SearXNG 📝🧑‍💻️ - It's a self-hosted meta search engine. Which means it piggy backs off of other search engines.
Kagi 🔐💰 - Instead of harvesting your data for money they just ask for payment up front. It's a bit expensive (50% off and I'm in).

Spoiler: Password Manager

Password Management - Google Pass & Lastpass
Lastpass has had a lot of data breaches and aren't trustworthy. Own access to your own passwords.
Bitwarden ✅🔐📝 - Best password manager out there and it's free for personal use. I self-host Bitwarden with the Vaultwarden server.

I don't have much for Android as yet (due to my lack of knowledge) but there are a few degoogled roms out there for phones such as /e/os, LineageOS and GrapheneOS. A true alternative would be linux phone (postmarketOS) but there a few years away from being usable by regular people.

Edit: Couple things I missed off:

Use uBlock Origin to block all google served ads.
I made a post here about alternative frontends for Youtube.

Withold as much data from Google as possible to reduce their chances of making money from you.

 

[RUFF BEEST]

Unrelated: Are people down on ground.news? Seems people were calling it centrist trash and, given the nature of the site, I don't know what's up with that.

Click to shrink...

Labeling media outlets by political bias is bound to generate ...feelings. However, I really appreciate ground.news aggregating the news this way. If anything, just being able to filter out the right-leaning trash so easily is great. Anyone calling it "centrist trash" seems misguided to me; you can use it to enforce your bias bubble or you can act on the shame of knowing you're in the bubble and try to seek "objectivity" -- it puts choice in your hands. And the AI summaries are top notch.

 

[Whales]

selling my google stocks over this

going to invest in something else

 

[Vicman]

Yeah that's why I was confused, it didn't make sense to me.

Click to shrink...

Oh gotcha. With news like this is awesome to read the far right and how they always make some absurdly stupid takes on workers rights.

 

[nitewulf]

First, let's cover their firing of employees who staged a sit-in protesting Google's contract with Israel's military (the IDF):

Google fires 28 workers for protesting $1.2 billion Israel contract

Google has fired more than two dozen employees for protesting the company's $1.2 billion contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud and

ground.news

(Choose your own media source)

• Google fired 28 employees who protested the company's cloud deal with Israel, citing disruptive behavior and threats.
• Google emphasized that impeding work and facility access is against policy, leading to the terminations.
• Employees involved in protests faced termination, even those not directly participating, sparking claims of retaliation.

Next, their layoffs:

Google cuts jobs in AI push | LinkedIn

Google is restructuring its finance team in a move that involves layoffs and relocations, according to an internal memo seen by CNBC.

www.linkedin.com

Kiiiinda thinking it's time I reevaluated my relationship with this company...

Click to shrink...

Do you work there? They haven't been "that" Google in a long, long time. I - like many used to be fascinated with them but I have worked very closely with them as a product manager in tech, and they are like any slow moving big company now, and to cut costs they'll offshore and certainly not overlook a 1.2 billion dollar deal.

 

[RUFF BEEST]

I know someone who knows one of the people who got arrested and fired. The statement Google gave about the firings was super hard-line. There's definitely been a shift since the 2020 days.

Their statement:

Click to shrink...

Man you could read that shit in a drill sergeant voice and it works great.

Do you work there? They haven't been "that" Google in a long, long time. I - like many used to be fascinated with them but I have worked very closely with them as a product manager in tech, and they are like any slow moving big company now, and to cut costs they'll offshore and certainly not overlook a 1.2 billion dollar deal.

Click to shrink...

I used to but I moved on 8 years ago. It was a lovely place at the time. How things change.

 

[Brick]

A collection of alternatives to google services from the Ethical Software OT:

Spoiler: Email

Email Providers - Gmail, Hotmail etc.
POSTEO 🌲💰 - I've seen them recommended a few times. Super environmentally conscious.
Proton Mail 🔐✅ - Security focused email with a free option for those who just need the one account.
Mailbox 🔐💰🌲 - Uses 100% green energy and is recommended in privacy circles.
Stalwart 🧑‍💻️📝🔮 - Self hosted software with the goal of making it viable to run your own mail server.

Email Clients - Gmail App, Outlook
These clients can be used with any email provider. Your email provider may have their own bespoke apps you can use.
Desktop - Linux, Windows, MacOS
Thunderbird 📝✅- Thunderbird is THE open source email client. Made by Mozilla, the makers of Firefox.
Mailspring 📝- Pretty looking email client. It does have a paid tier for more commercial features.
Vivaldi - This browser comes with an email client built-in.

Desktop - Linux Only
Geary 📝- Email client with a Gnome style interface.
Kmail 📝- Email client with a KDE style interface.

Mobile - Android, iOS
I couldn't find any for iOS so either use Apple Mail or if you're lucky your email provider, such as Proton Mail, may have one.
Thunderbird (Currently "K-9 Mail") 📝▶️ - Thunderbird recently took ownership of an open source app and are developing it under their umbrella.
Fairmail 📝🔐▶️ - Fully featured email client. Neat, intuitive user interface.

Spoiler: Browsers

Browser - Google Chrome, Safari
The goal here is to move away from Chromium based browsers entirely but barring that just getting away from Google will suffice.
Desktop - Linux, Windows, MacOS
Firefox 📝 - I don't really like vanilla Firefox honestly. It's aight.
LibreWolf 🔐📝 - Privacy Focused Firefox
Waterfox 🔐📝 - Over the last year regained it's independence from an Ad company. Though not as privacy focused as LibreWolf, it provides lots of customisation options and is working on implementing new features.
Vivaldi ✅ - In the meantime if none of the Firefox-based alternatives do it for you I highly recommend Vivaldi. The company are solid and have their own Mastodon instance.

Mobile - Android, iOS
I relied on external recommendations for this set of browsers.
Firefox 📝▶️🍎 - I don't really like vanilla Firefox honestly. It's aight.
Mull 📝▶️ - This is a privacy oriented and deblobbed web browser based on Firefox.
Cromite 📝▶️- Privacy focused Chromium browser with ad-blocking built in. It's technically a fork of Chromium rather than being based on it.
Vivaldi ▶️🍎 - A more mainstream cross-platform option. Blocks ads and syncs between devices.
DuckDuckGo Browser 📝▶️🍎 - I actually only recommend this for iOS as it loses out to the other privacy centric options on Android.

Spoiler: Search Engines

Search Engine - Google Search
Ultimately Google Search is bad now anyway for the most part. You're just adding on "reddit" to everything anyway.
If you're interested in where each search engine pulls it's results you can look at this map.
DuckDuckGo 🔐 - Search with a Privacy Focus
Startpage 🔐 - It piggy backs off of Google but keeps you private
Ecosia 🌲 - All profits go towards climate action!
SearXNG 📝🧑‍💻️ - It's a self-hosted meta search engine. Which means it piggy backs off of other search engines.
Kagi 🔐💰 - Instead of harvesting your data for money they just ask for payment up front. It's a bit expensive (50% off and I'm in).

Spoiler: Password Manager

Password Management - Google Pass & Lastpass
Lastpass has had a lot of data breaches and aren't trustworthy. Own access to your own passwords.
Bitwarden ✅🔐📝 - Best password manager out there and it's free for personal use. I self-host Bitwarden with the Vaultwarden server.

I don't have much for Android as yet (due to my lack of knowledge) but there are a few degoogled roms out there for phones such as /e/os, LineageOS and GrapheneOS. A true alternative would be linux phone (postmarketOS) but there a few years away from being usable by regular people.

Edit: Couple things I missed off:

Use uBlock Origin to block all google served ads.
I made a post here about alternative frontends for Youtube.

Withold as much data from Google as possible to reduce their chances of making money from you.

Click to shrink...

Thank you for this! I've been thinking about dropping google for a while (especially gmail), but had no idea where to start.

 

[AlgusUnderdunk]

"Don't be evil" motto very dead, for a good while now.

Click to shrink...

Hoo boy, remember those days? Back before they supported a genocide?

 

[Khanimus]

Google doing everything they can to make "don't be evil" the funniest slogan ever.

 

[AniHawk]

don't be evil
oh they got this whole thing screwed up.

don't, be evil!
see?

 

[LordFlash]

• Employees involved in protests faced termination, even those not directly participating, sparking claims of retaliation.

Click to shrink...

This is the only real cancel culture that exists and none of the grifting shitfucks who whine about cancel culture ever talk about it.

 

[Ushay]

Really disgusting approach they took to the employees I really feel for them and applaud their bravery and conviction, takes a lot of guts to do that and put your livelihood on the line too, bet this isn't doing Googles optics/PR any good either.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

What exactly did they do in order to protest? Google makes it sound like they were disrupting business and other people's work.


Edit: oh they barricaded themselves in the CEOs office. Yeah that's gonna get you fired.

 

[m_shortpants]

What exactly did they do in order to protest? Google makes it sound like they were disrupting business and other people's work.

Click to shrink...

They took the protest into the building and did a sit-in in the CEO's office. I think they raised a few anti-war banners too.

The internal statements made it sound like they trashed the place, which doesn't seem to be the case. They totally overstated the impact to punish these folks and basically threaten anyone who might be thinking about doing something similar. They literally had a livestream going on Twitch, they were basically sitting in the CEO's office twiddling their thumbs, looking at their phones, and occasionally talking.

It's really quite fascistic.

 

[squeakywheel]

They really need to clean house and be broken up.

 

[FusedAtoms]

Respect to the employees for taking a stand. Fuck Google

 

[Christor]

Man, I remember working at Google. Shit really hit the fan over the years.

 

[echoshifting]

I dunno about the conflation of the sit-in and the ramping up of investment in AI, guys. These seem like issues that should be discussed separately.

 

[RUFF BEEST]

I dunno about the conflation of the sit-in and the ramping up of investment in AI, guys. These seem like issues that should be discussed separately.

Click to shrink...

Nah, I'd argue that discussing one company firing people for multiple shitty reasons on the same day is a fine thing to do in one place. Firing people for greed, whether that's so they can chase $1.2B of genocide money, or because they're replacing people with AI, or because they're replacing people with cheaper labor in less developed locales, is the same action by the same people at the same time.

 

[Rezzzz]

They need unions

 

[GS_Dan]

I do wonder how it would have panned out if they chose to sit in any room other than that one.
The Google statements are weirdly harsh, makes me feel like I'm missing something

 

[SilkySm00th]

Do SO much Evil tm

 

[GeorgePBurdell]

Im fine with thinking Google is evil but im not sure many companies are going to allow you to protest inside of their own private facilities, disrupt work for others, and enter the office of the CEO during the protest. Surely they expected to be fired for this.

 

[Nesotenso]

They took the protest into the building and did a sit-in in the CEO's office. I think they raised a few anti-war banners too.

The internal statements made it sound like they trashed the place, which doesn't seem to be the case. They totally overstated the impact to punish these folks and basically threaten anyone who might be thinking about doing something similar. They literally had a livestream going on Twitch, they were basically sitting in the CEO's office twiddling their thumbs, looking at their phones, and occasionally talking.

It's really quite fascistic.

Click to shrink...

If I am not mistaken, it was the office of the Google Cloud CEO. Yeah, stuff like this gets you fired. I agree with their stance but they must have known this going into it.

 

[m_shortpants]

If I am not mistaken, it was the office of the Google Cloud CEO. Yeah, stuff like this gets you fired. I agree with their stance but they must have known this going into it.

Click to shrink...

Yeah it was GCP CEO Thomas Kurian.

I'm sure they all anticipated this outcome, so I salute them for doing it anyway. They got what they wanted, which was headlines and awareness I imagine. Every employee now knows about Project Nimbus, and so does the rest of the world.

 

[qaopjlll]

Be evil

 

[loco]

Talked to a friend that works there today and they said more people were going to protest but backed out last minute. I'm sure Google is checking for additional traces of dissent in their employees PCs.

 

[Dr Doom]

View: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTL515nah/

 

[Jakisthe]

Seems fair. Not sure what else would have been an appropriate reaction to staying in a CEO's office after being asked to leave, and that's always the risk of protests.

 

[Slayven]

you are a "partner" until you are not

 

[RUFF BEEST]

Seems fair. Not sure what else would have been an appropriate reaction to staying in a CEO's office after being asked to leave, and that's always the risk of protests.

Click to shrink...

Great take, thanks for your thoughts. I mean, could I point out that not everyone thinks bringing up someone's employment status needed to be done, others in fact don't even think retaliatory firing for protesting a company action is legal, nor was the unhinged tone of the memo warranted or defensible.

But again, thanks. I guess I'll just note that "fair" from now on means "if you cross a company it's okay for them to do everything in their power to crush you forever." After all, they asked first, right? Certainly, having them removed but not firing them and instead trying to address their criticism in an employee memo like a normal fucking place that employs human beings was... like, impossible, I'm sure?

 

[Lucky the Pizza Dog]

There's no way to read these firings as "illegal."